Will Our Scofflaw President Try to Enforce an Unratified Arms Trade Treaty?

“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” —William Pitt, the House of Commons, November 18, 1783

On the One Hand . . .

Obama has sold guns to Central American gangs and Mexican drug cartels—courtesy of Operation Fast & Furious—and has opened our southern border to ingress by these very criminals as well as Muslim terrorists and others. Obama also works daily to give the worst kinds of weapons to the Muslim fanatics running the nation of Iran. Nuclear weapons!

On the Other Hand . . .

When it comes to the American people, Obama has signed executive orders and presidential memoranda aimed at infringing the rights of the people to keep and bear arms. Obama plans to use medical doctors as his agents, under the aegis of Obamacare, to create a national registry of gun owners. And he also plans to use medical reasons to disqualify Americans, under un-Constitutional Obamacare rules, from gun ownership, creating the conditions for an unprecedented federal gun-grab. (See my article concerning this issue at https://eaglerising.com/12893/obama-use-obamacare-doctors-infringe-right-bear-arms/).

The Pattern

The disturbing pattern that emerges, from Obama’s policies and practices, indicates a president who wishes to empower those who break US laws and constrain those who follow the laws and want others to follow them as well. This goes for everything from immigration laws to drug laws, and even extends to free-speech and self-defense rights under the US Bill of Rights.

How Our Scofflaw President Might Attempt to Enforce an Unratified Treaty

The United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs has announced that the Arms Trade Treaty, which regulates the international trade in conventional weapons from small arms to aircraft carriers, officially takes effect on December 24, 2014. Secretary of State John Kerry signed the treaty on Obama’s behalf in September of 2013, but 54 US Senators immediately released a statement at that time urging the Obama Administration not to try implementing the treaty without first getting Senate approval to do so. But the fact is that, while Obama has paid lip-service to the Constitution on occasion, he has actually never let the Constitution restrain him in practice.

Treaty Provisions

Article Two of the UN treaty delineates the treaty’s prohibitions, which includes a prohibition, to civilians, of the right to purchase, own, sell, trade, or transfer every kind of weapon that could be utilized for armed resistance—which means handguns, among other things. This would leave all American citizens at the mercy of criminals and, potentially, a tyrannical government.

Article Three puts the “ammunition/munitions fired, launched or delivered by the conventional arms covered under Article Two” under the auspices of the treaty, as well, allowing their importation and sales to be regulated, or even banned.

Article Four places all “parts and components” of weapons under the same-style regulation of the state.

Article Five has a “General Implementation” section that orders all countries signing onto the treaty to “establish and maintain a national control system, including a national control list.” This registry would exist to “apply the provisions of this Treaty to the broadest range of conventional arms.”

Article Twelve of the treaty adds the record-keeping requirement that the list indicate “the quantity, value, model/type, authorized international transfers of conventional arms,” as well as the names of their ultimate recipients, referred to as “end users.”

And, ultimately, the treaty demands that national governments enact “appropriate measures” to enforce the treaty, including civilian disarmament. If these countries cannot get this done on their own, however, Article Sixteen of the treaty provides for UN assistance, specifically including help with the enforcement of “stockpile management, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes.” UN peacekeeping forces could help signatories of the treaty to disarm their citizenry.

A Possible Role for INTERPOL

Although the US Senate has not ratified the treaty, President Obama has signed Executive Order 13524 to give INTERPOL full authority to conduct law enforcement activities inside the United States with full immunity from US laws and with complete independence from American oversight. This means that INTERPOL is to be allowed to enforce international law (possibly to include UN treaties, with INTERPOL agents deputized as UN peacekeepers) on US soil, without any check on its activities by US authorities who have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. This is a possible work-around in President Obama’s efforts to enforce an illegal treaty through the use of a cleverly-designed executive order that will certainly require court rulings to overturn. The order was issued by President Obama on December 16, 2009, as an amendment to Executive Order 12425.

Obama’s use of this executive order in this fashion would create a Constitutional crisis. This would be a clear violation of the Constitution, but, while the American people wait for the courts to clarify it as such, they could easily be subjected to a process of mass gun confiscation in the meantime. The loss of self-protection capabilities, due to the victim-disarmament that would ensue, would certainly result in significant losses of life to criminal elements, during the time that all of this is playing out on the national level. And the upshot of all this could well be that many Americans will never see the return of their self-defense weapons, due to overhasty destruction of them by the state, actual loss or theft of the weapons while in custody of the state, or even corrupt pushback from state authorities claiming that they never took the weapons in the first place.

Chipping Away at Freedom

In the end, Obama will have created more instability and increased the incentives for Americans to divest themselves of self-defense weapons. This would achieve Obama’s goal of increasing the dependence of Americans on the state for everything from relief money to police help (even though police help from a 9-1-1 call has less than a one-in-twenty chance of saving the life of the victim). A gain in dependency and a loss in self-sufficiency among members of the citizenry would be assured.

To prevent Obama from fully exercising his propensity for executive overreach, the Senate and the House of Representatives should hold hearings, once the new Congress is called into session, to make it clear that this UN treaty will have no effect on US policy, domestically or internationally, unless the treaty is properly ratified by a 2/3 vote of the US Senate. Unfortunately, Barack Obama is becoming perhaps the greatest teacher to Americans of a very important life-lesson: For the US Constitution to work properly, the president and Congressional leaders must act with integrity, according to the rule of law; the election of a fully-vetted chief executive is required, and he must have a reputation for trustworthiness.

The views expressed in this opinion article are solely those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by EagleRising.com

About the author

Paul Dowling

Paul Dowling is an American patriot whose mission in life is to educate and enlighten his fellow citizens about the correct principles for facilitating a life of freedom and a culture based upon the Golden Rule, as well as to do whatever is in his power to help protect his countrymen from their government.

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